It’s somewhat just that Rove takes responsibility, but not in the way that he should. Several authors have outlined how the Bush administration knew, or should have known, that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had no weapons, and that invasion on that basis was, in fact, a lie.

Although Rove tries to minimize the conflict, morphing it into a simple dispute over political tactics, that obscures the larger moral question, which is Rove’s culpability in selling a war that his superiors (at least) or even he (at most) had good reason to believe was unjustified. (Remember, it was Rove who sat at the head of a White House task force charged with selling the war.) From that perspective, Rove isn’t just responsible for a bungled political effort. He’s responsible for the needless deaths of thousands.

Are we ever going to answer that larger moral question, I wonder?